"Transcendentalist vs. Puritan"

I found this video on youtube of some english class project a bunch of kids put together called, "Transcendentalist vs. Puritan."  I thought it was actually a very good portrayal of what it really means to be a transcendentalist because it compares it to an opposite group of people who we studied earlier in the year; the Puritans.

In the video a transcendentalist is sitting in the mountains looking out at nature and talking to a bunny, I think, when a Puritan shows up immediately starts screaming nonsense about hell and church.  It is almost a showdown of completely opposite views, and of course we have studied the faults with Puritan belief, we have yet to think about the faults of transcendentalism.  I am sure to many people their beliefs of nature being all powerful, and valuing intuition of experience are just as crazy as the Puritan beliefs that if someone decides to dance they are immediately condemned to hell.  We have only just started this unit of transcendentalism, so as of now I can not truthfully say any faults of a view that I hardly know, but I think it is a very important thing to keep note of as we continue to study this elaborate belief.

This is a painting from the Romantic period by George Catlin titled, "Buffalo Chase in Winter."  We looked at many paintings in class from the same period, but this stood out to me more than a lot of the ones we looked at.

First off, look at the title, I do not think Americans are the people chasing buffalo in this painting, so right off the bat we can assume it is depicting Native Americans.  What surprised me was that in this painting it portrays the Native 

Americans as savages who are simply slaughtering countless buffalo in their tracks.  Also, at least half of the painting is focused and devoted to the clouds rolling in and the endless snowy hills of whatever frontier this is taking place on.  This really belittles the Native Americans and makes them look very insignificant to nature; in other words that nature could swallow them up whenever it wanted.  Another thing to look at is that not only nature is being expressed as much bigger and more powerful, look at the Native American closest to us in the painting, and his size juxtaposed to the buffalo.  It looks as if the buffalo is at least twice his size, and not only that, but the sheer number of buffalo to Indians downsizes them even more.  Over and over again the idea that nature is far greater than human life is expressed not only this painting, but in many others like it as well.

Another Example

I just went with my parents to see the movie "Changeling," and although we are no longer in the perilous times unit, I found this to be a prime example of why authority's power should never be expanded under any circumstances.

Long story short, a woman loses her child and then the corrupt police force finds another random child and tries to convince her that it is hers.  It ends up becoming some bid thing and so on, good movie though.  Anyway, more in depth, the captain of the LAPD realizes that they messed up with the whole missing child thing and is so stubborn to the point where he claims the woman is insane and throws her in a psychiatric ward.  Also, and this is all based off a true story, the captain assigned fifty of his own men to become the new LAPD and basically gave them a license to kill whoever they wanted whenever they wanted.  Is that okay?  Why did that captain have so much authority and power beyond what he should have?  We will never know, but until that woman stood up to him and brought down all the corruption he was having a field day.  That is one of many situations in which a leader or authority figure was given power and not only used it for his own greed, but endangered and killed many people with it and should not have had all that power in the first place.  This was in 1930, but I hope we can learn from our mistakes like we should.

Constitution=Freedom?

The Constitution says that we, meaning each individual person, have all these rights and amendments that make us free men and women.  I was looking at our homework which was to answer those questions about the essay coming up, and I came across the one about the ideals of the Constitution.  Eventually I found the word "freedom" written down in my list of bullet-pointed things.  It stuck out to me for some reason, does the Constitution really make all of us free people?  There are sort of two ways of looking at it; on one hand yes because it is giving us all rights and protection against our own government which therefore makes us free, or at least as close to free as the government thinks we should be.  Also, no because by even having a set body of laws we are being restricted in many ways.  It really depends on how one defines the word freedom.  The dictionary defines freedom as, "Exemption from external control, inference, regulation, etc..."  If that is the case, then nobody in this world is free.  Is it really even possible to be free?  Think about it, the only people who were truly free were the first people who set foot on this earth.  My personal definition of freedom is being able to direct one's future in whichever way he/she chooses.  In that, the Constitution fails to provide freedom, in fact, I believe each individual is the only one who can provide freedom for themselves.  When the Constitution says it grants us freedom of speech, religion, etc..., that is saying that we were not able to do so before hand.  That is like me saying everyone is now allowed to wear tye-dye shirts.  What, we were not able to before?  So to answer my first question, if not already known, the Constitution does not make us free people, it is actually quite the opposite.  That is not to say the Constitution is not necessary, but that is a entirely separate matter.

Do They Need Each Other?

I was lying in bed this morning extremely tired because I had just woke up, and I started thinking about what we talked about in class concerning whether or not idealists need pragmatists and vice versa.  I believe that it goes both ways, in one sense someone could say idealists need pragmatists because for any idealistic goal or idea to be accomplished there must be a pragmatist there for a couple of reasons.  One, to help the idealists get started and to, in a way, do the dirty and simple work for them; in other words pragmatists provide the step stool for idealists to reach and be able to screw in the light bulb.  Two, to be a sort of cushion for the idealists when their ideas fail because if idealists had no support and help every time one of their ideas burned to the ground they would lose hope.  I only say that because idealistic goals are usually similar to a false dichotomy, they either accomplish their goal and the best becomes reality, or they do not accomplish that goal in which case the worst becomes reality; its kind of a fifty-fifty chance or a with or against situation.  Looking at it the other way, I think one could also argue that pragmatists need idealists so they can achieve greatness.  Yes, a company of all pragmatists would succeed, but it would not achieve ultimate greatness of succeed past the average without idealists in it to push for higher and greater things all the time.  In this way, it is viable to go both ways, but it is also viable to believe that without one, the other would die. 

Sugar and Water

I found a video on youtube that is basically an interview of a college psychology teacher and his views on pragmatism.  He makes some good points and uses a few really interesting examples of what it actually means to be pragmatic.  The example he used which stood out to me the most was the sugar dissolving in water example.  The professor, Sidney Morgenbesser, said that pragmatism is the practical affect or outcome of what happens if someone does this.  What happens if someone pours sugar in water?  The sugar dissolves in the water and that is simply what happened.  He is saying that pragmatists will not try and give a deeper meaning on the subject or some sort of pointless explanation of what happened in a different sense that may twists the truth, he is saying that pragmatists look at a a tree being cut down in the rainforest as a tree being cut down in the rainforest.  Not that a tree being cut down in the rainforest is the niches of 1000 organisms being destroyed.  Pragmatists will look at an idea or an action exactly for what they are, nothing more, nothing less; and I found that to be a very good way to define what pragmatism actually is. 

Whose to Blame?

I was sitting at my computer listening to some music and checking my email when a familiar favorite song came on; The Bends by Radiohead.  I noticed a few lyrics in the song that stood out to me about how people react in perilous time.  The song says, 

"Where do we go from here?

The planet is a gunboat
In a sea of fear
And where are you?"

A lot of the time we hear that people are scared, angry, and distraught during perilous times so they blame others: authority figures for example. I think this is saying the opposite, that in perilous times people will get upset, and when that happens just as often as they blame others, they blame themselves.  I have seen this very idea many times recently in my life.  For example, earlier, and I do not remember why, but I found myself discussing the topic of divorce with my mom. (fyi: my parents are not getting divorced)  She told me that often the child feels at fault for his/her parent's divorce even if they know they have done nothing.  That is a very interesting human reaction to a perilous time because in that we see the child, who knows they have done nothing wrong, feeling responsible for the situation.  Why?  I believe it is because a family, similar to a country, is something that functions as a whole where each individual has the power to change, so for that very reason when a perilous time presents itself that was out of the control of that individual, they automatically feel at fault.  It is like a soccer game for example, if one defender loses the ball and lets the other team score to win the game that is that defenders fault, but at the same time they are not the only one on the team.